What a Script should look like

Writing a script is the most important part of a movie, if you don’t believe me think of the last great movie you saw. I bet it had a great story, and even though it might have had great effects and actors it is the story that really made it great.

If you read that first paragraph and don’t believe me then think of Star Wars or Indiana Jones. The original three of each of these films were great, they had good stories. Now think of the more recent Star Wars and Indiana Jones, they had great budgets and great actors, but they lacked the one thing that they needed a great story.

Now, don’t get me wrong they made it big at the box office, but who cares, they defiled their predecessors because they took these great movies and destroyed them. The point of a good movie is a good story.

The thing is though, it doesn’t really matter how great your story is if you can not put it into the right format, because as good as your story might be there are some rules that you should follow so that almost everyone in your production is on the right page.

Now I’ve talked about script writing programs in the past (click here and here for past posts), and I’m not going to force you download anything you do not want to, but I just thought you might like to know what a script should like with all of the elements in it.

The Importance of a storyboard

Now, I know that I've talked about how a storyboard is important, and how it can make life easier, but I want to show you how side by side with the storyboard that planning actually does help regardless of if it is with stick figures, better looking hand drawings, Celtx's storyboard add ons, or any other storyboarding program. Making a storyboard helps out so much when it comes to production.

I know this because I've worked on productions that didn't have a storyboard of what the director was looking for. It was all in their head, so everyone was sitting around waiting for the director to give his vision for the shot instead of being able to jump to the next shot or scene, while the director was working with the actors.

To give you some perspective, we shot the commercial below in about an hour and a half and that includes set up and tear down times. Because we went into Lucky Linda's with not only a plan of what we wanted to shoot, but also an actual shot list of what we needed to get proper coverage we were able to get in and get out in a good amount of time.

If you've never done a storyboard before I am encouraging you to do one now and if you have done them before I continue to encourage you to do them in the projects you are working on. I hope you enjoy the video below comparing the storyboard we made to how the commercial ended up.

The Importance of the Script Part 2 AKA Download Celtx Now

So now that you've written your script and you're ready to move on to the next steps of preproduction, figuring out how long your movie is going to be and breaking down the script.

So first, figuring out how long your movie is going to be; this part is easy. You simply take your script and see how many pages the script is and that is how many minutes your script should be. This is important, because if you have a ten page script you should be looking to make sure you have enough footage to cover those ten pages. This means that when you get into shooting and editing you should be looking to make your film ten minutes.

I've been on shoots where the scripts are around 10-12 pages and when you get done with shooting and editing the film ends up being about 20-30 minutes. Just think about that. When the person wrote the script there were envisioning the film to be about 10-12 minutes, the actors were envisioning the film to be about 10-12 minutes, the DP was envisioning 10-12 minutes, everyone was expecting the film to be 10-12 minutes until it got into editing, when either the editor or the director couldn't let their vision of the film die and just had all of the shots in the film.

So, If you write a ten page script make it a ten minute movie.

Next, what you are going to need to do is breakdown your script. If you used Celtx to write your script then breaking down your script is really easy, because there is a breakdown tab on the right hand side that allows you to easily add actors, characters, props, locations, etc. into their different respected groups, which then can be generated into a report to easily know who is required for each scene.

After breaking down your script, I'd recommend using the storyboard feature and calendar feature in Celtx to help schedule your film for shooting.

If you can't tell, I'm a huge fan of Celtx as a program, it's amazing considering it is free to download to your computer and a small fee to download it to your iphone, ipod touch, and ipad. You can download the program at www.celtx.com.

Also, below I have included a couple books that can help you understand all of the complexity of what celtx has to offer.

Mastering Celtx by Terry Borst
Celtx: Open Source Screenwriting by Ralph Roberts

The Importance of the Script

The script is probably one of the most important aspects of the movie, if not the most important aspect of the movie that you are trying to make. Now I've been on crews where the script was either small or non existant, and somehow we made the movie, but it wasn't what it could have been.

There were long pauses between scenes that should have been filled with setting up or taring down for the next scene. Actors didn't know lines and what lines they made up on the spot had to be written down so that for additional takes they would be able to be consistant with those lines for editing. There was simply just general chaos around the set and discontentment.

Now the purpose of the script is not to just get the lines of what the actors say or the actions that those actors are supposed to do, but it also serves as time keeper, a scene breakdown, and a prop needing device. To get all of these things out of your script, there is a format that you are supposed to write a script in, and this is not only for your good, but also your cast and crew.

Now, I know the objection, what's the big deal about following a format, and I guess if you want to just shoot movies in your backyard with your friends than it's not a big deal, but if you want to make everything about your production look better you need to follow basic script writing formats and practices. Plus even if you don't want to get any better than your basic backyard films, this will still help you out.

First and formost you need to head over to www.Celtx.com and download their scriptwriting program. It's a free download and will not only help you with writing, but also most of preproduction including scheduling, script breakdown, and storyboarding. To be honest there are other script writing programs that some people might recommend to you, but they can cost an arm and a leg and some of them only do the script writing itself.

After you download the program and open it up, the formatting is fairly simple to deal with. There is a drop down menu, here is what all of the menu items mean.

SCENE HEADING: This is the scene, starts with a either writing INT./EXT. (interior or exterior), then you write where the location is. JIMMY'S HOUSE, THE HOSPITAL, A CAR. then you follow it up with what time of day it is.
ACTION: This is what's happening in the scene, and is pretty straight forward what is happening to your characters, what is the scene like.
CHARACTER: This is a title spot to say which character is going to be saying a line. That Character's name should always be capitalized.
DIALOGUE: These are the words that the character is saying.
PARENTHETICAL: This is when a short action while the character is talking.
TRANSITION: This is for the technical aspect of how you are going to transition from one scene to the next, that could be dissolve, wipe, attack of killer monkeys, whatever you want.
To start out with lets talk about the script as a time keeper,
SHOT: This would be a particular shot, that you need
TEXT: I'm not going to explain what text is, because I think you are pretty smart people.

So, now you can get to writing following these basic principals. I'll follow this post up with another one explaining why following all of these rules are so important, but for now, just get out there and get going.

Also if you like what I'm writing about click the follow button, leave a comment, let me know how I can do things better, because that's my goal.